Voipally

sureteq.com has a good guide to setting up the Asterisk PBX using the Trixbox bootable CD distribution.

Trixbox v1.2 is an all-inclusive Asterisk PBX solution that comes on a bootable CD. It makes the process of bringing up a VoIP PBX solution a piece of cake. This document details, step by step, how to install and configure Trixbox v1.2 for a small business. It includes information on how to set up extensions, incoming and outgoing phone calls, and other useful applications.

Skype has released an early-access development version for Windows. This version includes a new audio library that is supposed to improve voice quality.

We’re working on a new version of Skype for Windows which will be released soon, including a new audio library. This page give you all the details on this new release and lets you know how to give us your feedback.

/!\ This is an early version of Skype for Windows 2.6 and users may experience some problems when using it.
We do not offer Customer Support for this early version of Skype for Windows 2.6.

We recommend that novice users and those on production systems only use later production versions of Skype for Windows.

However if you are an experienced user and do not fear getting some errors then you are welcome to use this early version of Skype for Windows 2.6 and report any issues you may encounter to help us to improve the final version.

Feedback so far appears to be mixed, with many complaining about the installation of a new browser toolbar.

Arstechnica has an editorial on some suggestions for how Google’s GTalk Instant Messenger client could impove. They suggest:

• Focusing on corporate users, by integrating support for things like Google Calendar.
• Increasing mobile support – they note that GTalk on the Nintendo DS would have huge potential.
• Soliciting feature requests from their users.

See http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060731-7385.html for the whole article.

If you’d like to use a traditional telephone device to call other phones using Skype Oldskoolphreak has documented the process at http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/voip/skypeout_via_ata.txt

It’s not exactly a simple process, and required a virtual PBX installed. The instructions use the Axon Virtual PBX, but note that:

I’m probably sure you can substitute the Axon PBX for Asterisk, seeing as Uplink isn’t hardcoded to use Axon. It’ll require some tweaking though. I didn’t have much luck with it. If anyone wants to give it a go with Asterisk and succeeds, let me know, and I’ll add it to this text file with full credit given.

The process also requires a SIP-to-Skype bridge, so it might be possible to make this work using a SIP Softphone like Gizmo.

Skype have just relased their Office Toolbar which allows you to:

Place calls and send the file you are currently working on via Skype. The toolbar recognizes phone numbers within your document and lets you call them using SkypeOut or send SMS messages.

I’m a little surprised that Skype developed this themselves and didn’t leave it for one of their developer partners to create. Microsoft has a history of “stealing oxygen” from their partners by moving things that would have been add-ons into the operating system. Is Skype going the same way?